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John Kiriakou is a former CIA officer specializing in counterterrorism.
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00:00My name is John Kiriakou.
00:02I was a field agent for the CIA.
00:04I hunted, tracked, and captured terrorists around the world.
00:08This is everything I'm authorized to tell you.
00:12I'm not allowed to say how many officers or what percentage of CIA officers are dedicated
00:17to counterterrorism.
00:18After 9-11, the CIA became a paramilitary organization.
00:21We started borrowing special forces guys.
00:24They would be on loan to the CIA to just fly somewhere, kill somebody, and then fly
00:29back for the next Tuesday meeting.
00:37The most obvious risk of working as a counterterrorism officer, obviously, is the risk of death.
00:43There were two guys who I worked with in CTC, the Counterterrorism Center, Helga Boes and
00:50Mike Spann, who were killed in the line of duty.
00:53And it wasn't just them.
00:55I was the chief of the counterintelligence branch in the Osama Bin Laden group.
01:00The woman that I sat next to was killed in the line of duty in the Khost bombing in Afghanistan.
01:06The suicide bomber, he blew her and six of our colleagues up.
01:09So death, destruction.
01:13But on an equally personal note, your marriage is probably not going to survive an operational
01:20tour in the Directorate of Intelligence.
01:23The stress is just otherworldly.
01:28It's the most difficult and dangerous thing you can do as a CIA officer for a variety of
01:33reasons.
01:34First, when people join terrorist groups, they do that because they are true believers.
01:41And in most cases, they hate you or what you stand for more than they love life itself.
01:49And so they are very happy to die for a cause.
01:53At the same time, if you're working counterterrorism issues, you generally aren't doing it in London,
01:59or Paris, or Ottawa, you're doing it in Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan, Pakistan.
02:07In Pakistan, unless you were going to carry out an operational act, you had to stay on
02:13the compound.
02:14It was just simply too dangerous.
02:16And so not only do you have this exceedingly difficult job to do, but you have to blend
02:22in and not attract attention to yourself and keep yourself safe at the same time.
02:29I'll give you an example.
02:31When I was stationed in Athens, Athens was one of the most dangerous places in the world
02:35for Americans, especially for American CIA officers.
02:3817 November had murdered the CIA station chief, two U.S. defense attachés, and a hapless
02:44Air Force technical sergeant.
02:46This was a very, very lethal group.
02:49And so that was my primary job, to work against an incredibly deadly group.
02:55And I was the go-to guy on Arab terrorism there because I spoke Arabic.
02:59And I drove an armored car, level four armor.
03:03I carried two guns.
03:04I had a Glock 9mm on my waist and a Smith & Wesson 38 on my ankle.
03:10Even kept a buck knife in my back pocket just in case everything turned to and that's all
03:14I had left.
03:15Halfway through my tour, the British Embassy received a new defense attaché.
03:20His name was Stephen Saunders.
03:21He was a one-star general, brigadier general.
03:24Everybody loved him.
03:25Everybody liked to be around him, the life of the party.
03:28He loved being on camera.
03:30So anytime you're at some event and there's a camera, Stephen would run up to the camera
03:34and give an interview.
03:37Which is great if you're not in a country that's categorized as critical threat for terrorism.
03:44I took delivery of this new BMW 540, fully armored.
03:49And so we were at a cocktail party the day that I got the car.
03:55And I was standing there with Stephen, he was making fun of me and he says, you Americans,
04:00you're so obsessed with security.
04:03It's a NATO country, what are you so afraid of?
04:06And they all chuckled.
04:08And I said, you Brits live in a dream world.
04:11If you think because they have palm trees and pretty beaches that they're not going to
04:14kill you if they have the chance.
04:16And we all laughed again.
04:18And then a couple of weeks later, I made a mistake that I had never made before.
04:26I slept through my alarm.
04:28I had to just get on the main road and go straight to the embassy.
04:31And it was straight down this, this direct road called QVCS Boulevard.
04:37So I get on QVCS to go straight down the mountain and get to the embassy, turn on the radio,
04:42I'm listening to some music.
04:45And this announcer comes on and he says, avoid QVCS Boulevard.
04:49There was a terrorist attack at Philothea.
04:52I had definitely never heard that.
04:53But when he said it, I see this white, this white Rover in the far left lane.
05:00There's blood all over the interior of the windows.
05:05And I can see when I get close enough that the driver's side window has been shot out.
05:08And Stephen Saunders drives a white Rover.
05:11It turned out that they had taken him to a hospital that was next door to the British
05:15embassy.
05:16And he died there about 20 minutes later.
05:17I mean, we knew who did it.
05:18It was Revolutionary Organization, 17 November.
05:21Now, 17 November usually would drop a manifesto at the site of the assassination.
05:27Or they would mail one to a leftist newspaper.
05:30My boss runs into my office and he says, did you see the manifesto for the Saunders hit?
05:34He says, it mentions you.
05:35I said, come on, not possible.
05:38Like seriously, nobody took security as seriously as I did.
05:42And he shows it to me.
05:43And it says in Greek, we saw the big spy.
05:47But he was driving an armored car and we knew he was armed.
05:50So we elected to carry out the revolutionary sentence on the war criminal Saunders.
05:54And he said, you got to go.
05:57We're going to take you to the airport.
05:58You're going to go home.
05:59We'll pick up your kids.
06:00We'll pick up your wife.
06:01We'll package your house.
06:03So we flew out.
06:04The night before that happened was the last night I spent in a house with my wife.
06:10And we were divorced soon after.
06:12She was just like, yeah, I'm not doing this anymore.
06:20Assets are critically important to counterterrorism because as an American CIA officer, I'm not
06:27going to be able to infiltrate a group directly.
06:29I was one of only a handful of CIA officers who spoke fluent Arabic.
06:35Even with my fluent Arabic, I spoke with an accent.
06:38So John's not going to be able to put on a thobe and a dish dasha and, you know, walk into
06:44a terrorist training camp and volunteer.
06:46That's just not real life.
06:47It doesn't happen.
06:48And so your job is to recruit someone who is either a member of a terrorist group or can
06:54become a member of a terrorist group so that you can use his information to disrupt future
06:59attacks.
07:00There are a million different types of people that you might want to consider recruiting.
07:05But if you recruit a bona fide terrorist, someone who is able to get into the group,
07:11you're going to meet with him once a month for hours probably.
07:16And he's going to give you five, six, 10 different intelligence reports.
07:21This is what they're talking about.
07:22This is what they're planning.
07:23They want to do an attack in, you know, in Bali or whatever.
07:28That's the stuff that you want to get.
07:30When I was training as a case officer, one of my instructors said to me that he had gone
07:35through his entire 30 plus year career in operations and he never ever had a target say
07:41no to a recruitment.
07:43And I said, you must be like some kind of a magical wizard of recruitment.
07:49And he laughed and he said, no, when you eventually say, listen, I'm not really, you know, the
07:54economic officer here, I'm really a CIA officer.
07:58When you drop that cover, you have to be certain that they're not going to run screaming from
08:03the room, calling for the police, reporting you to their ambassador.
08:08You're going to get arrested.
08:09You're going to get expelled.
08:10Your career is going to come to a halt.
08:12You have to be a hundred percent sure.
08:15That's where you take them to lunch.
08:17You take them to dinner.
08:18You spend weekends together.
08:20You do day trips.
08:21Your wives become friends.
08:22Your kids are playing together to the point where you have figured out by now whether he
08:29has a vulnerability and a vulnerability can mean a lot of different things.
08:34Maybe he just really, really loves his kids.
08:38That can be a vulnerability because then that allows me to say, I see how much you love your
08:44kids.
08:45I want your kids to go to the best schools.
08:47I can literally get your kid into Harvard and I'll pay for it too, by the way.
08:52And he says, well, what do you want in exchange?
08:54Well, I want the plans to that new Russian tank.
08:57I'd really like to get a peek at it.
08:59Another vulnerability would be, you know, maybe the guy's wife has cancer, but you can get
09:06her into the Mayo Clinic where she can get the best cancer treatment on the planet.
09:11Maybe the guy's a drinker or a gambler, even better.
09:14And he's always short of money because he's maybe embezzling a little bit from the embassy.
09:1995% of recruitments are made for the money.
09:23Sometimes it's ideology.
09:24Sometimes it's, you know, this desire for excitement.
09:27They love James Bond.
09:28They want to be a part of it.
09:29And sometimes it's for revenge.
09:31They hate their boss.
09:33They hate their country.
09:34They hate their leader.
09:35You've got to develop that target to the point where he comes to believe that you are his best
09:41friend to the point where you know in your heart he's willing to commit espionage for you.
09:48The resources at the CIA are virtually unlimited.
09:54In exchange though, the information has to be incredible, let's say, but you have access
10:00to the location of the leader of Al Qaeda and we're able to break down the door and grab
10:05the guy.
10:07There's a reward for you of between $10 and $25 million that we will pay in cash, in gold,
10:14in diamonds, in land, any way you want to receive it.
10:18But the budget is going to be there if the information is good.
10:22I made a recruitment one time.
10:23I heard from a source, a group of members of a terrorist cell were meeting for coffee
10:30in the same coffee house.
10:33Every single day, 10 o'clock, they'd go for coffee, which is a terrible thing to do.
10:37By way of trade craft, never, never establish a pattern.
10:43I started going there at 9.30 in the morning.
10:47So sure enough, 10 o'clock, they came in, four or five of them.
10:51And one of them turned and looked at me.
10:52I did that for a week.
10:55I started the second week.
10:57Every day, 9.30, I'm sitting there with my Arabic newspaper.
11:00And this time one of them nodded at me.
11:03So I nodded back to him.
11:04And then one day, he came in by himself.
11:08And he sits down.
11:09And we start talking.
11:11And I ask him, how's his family?
11:16Oh, he said, my wife is in Cairo with my son and my daughter.
11:21And I've never met my son.
11:23He really was a family man.
11:26He was religious.
11:28He made some bad decisions and ended up in Afghanistan.
11:31And he just wanted to go home.
11:34And I said to him, if that's all you want, you just want to go home?
11:39I said, well, I can take care of that.
11:41To make a long story short, I recruited him.
11:44I got him his passport.
11:45I gave him some money to get himself established again and put him on a plane.
11:50And he gave me, in return, everything I had asked for.
11:54Very specific information that we used to actively recruit other al-Qaeda members.
12:01I asked him at the end of it, why did you let me recruit you?
12:06And he said, I've been here for five years.
12:08And you were the first person who ever asked me about my family.
12:17There are no tactics taught to help you ingratiate yourself with potential targets.
12:24You either have it in your gut or you don't.
12:28So a normal asset meeting, you go through the mad minute.
12:32Were you followed here?
12:33Were you followed home last time?
12:34Did you have any problems, any concerns during the course of the month?
12:38And let's meet one month from tonight at 8 o'clock at such and such a hotel.
12:44Then you sit down.
12:46You have a coffee.
12:48How was your month?
12:49How are things going?
12:51What have you heard?
12:52What do you think about this guy?
12:53What do you know about him?
12:54Do we need to be worried about him?
12:56Is he going to be in charge of the weapons cash?
12:59That kind of thing.
13:00It's not unusual for a meeting to last two or three hours.
13:04I was in a meeting once that lasted eight hours.
13:07It could be at a safe house.
13:09It could be walking down the beach.
13:11Anywhere where you're going to be safe.
13:13And that would be private.
13:15There was one source I recruited.
13:17It was too dangerous to meet him in the country that I recruited him in.
13:21So we would fly to Europe and we would meet in Europe once a month.
13:25And we would meet like eight hours a day for three days.
13:30And then I would take a train to a different country so it didn't look like we were both
13:34flying back from the same city at the same time and it didn't arouse any suspicion.
13:39Yeah, some meetings by necessity are conducted in cars.
13:43And so sometimes you're going to have to do what's called a CPU, a car pickup.
13:48You want to be able to pick the person up at a spot where as few people as possible are
13:54going to see you.
13:56Maybe you're doing it in a semi-residential area where he's standing on a corner.
14:01You come down an alley instead of a main street.
14:04He jumps in the car and you take off.
14:06Let's say the meeting is at two o'clock.
14:10You want to be there between 1.58 and 2.02.
14:14And if you're there at 1.58 and he's not there, you do one more run.
14:19And if he's not there by 2.02, you abort the meeting and you try it again 24 hours later
14:24or 72 hours later or whatever your agreement is.
14:27You don't want somebody to say, I wonder why that car keeps driving in a loop, you know,
14:32and then they write down your license plate number.
14:34You just, you don't want to come to anybody's attention.
14:39Double agents are indeed real.
14:45Double agents are a very, very big problem on both sides of the double.
14:50I was well into my career and I had a great friend who was a station chief.
14:54He called me one day.
14:55I was at headquarters and he called me from overseas and he said, hey, I was hoping you
15:00could do me a favor.
15:01One of my guys has recruited a double agent.
15:05The double doesn't know that we know he's a double.
15:09The enemy country has instructed the double to demand to only speak with the station chief.
15:17And he said, I live here, it's too dangerous for me to meet with this guy.
15:21Can you fly out here and pretend to be me and handle the double agent?
15:25I said, of course.
15:26So I fly out and I meet with the guy.
15:28I meet him in some hotel and I give him a big bear hug at first, which is unusually warm
15:34in the Middle East.
15:35But I needed to pat him down for weapons and he didn't have any weapons.
15:39And so I made a big deal of taking off my jacket to show him that I didn't have any weapons.
15:44I sat down, we ordered some coffee from room service.
15:47He said, are you the chief?
15:48I said, you asked for him.
15:50You got him, buddy.
15:51I'm the chief.
15:52I would meet with him once a month and this went on for about six months.
15:57We were getting, you know, the take on everything that he was reporting back and what the enemy
16:03country was telling him to do.
16:05Finally, I'm at headquarters one day.
16:07I get a call from a sister agency and the woman says, are you handling this double case?
16:14And I said, yeah, listen, he's been instructed to kill you in the next meeting.
16:19I said, oh, come on.
16:20I think the guy's afraid of his shadow.
16:21He's not going to kill me.
16:23I know him well.
16:25He's a coward.
16:27He's not going to pull a gun and shoot me.
16:29But even if he were to pull a gun and shoot me, how about this?
16:32Basically, he calls me when he's coming into the lobby of the hotel, I'll tell him to come
16:37up to the room directly.
16:39And when he comes in, I'll prop the door open.
16:41When he comes in, I'll grab him, take him down.
16:44You guys burst in from the other room and we get him.
16:48They reluctantly agreed with a proviso that I wear a bulletproof vest.
16:52I said, fine.
16:54So I fly back out and four armed security guys in the lobby.
17:01And it turns out the bad guys have four armed security people in the lobby.
17:05And they're all kind of looking at each other sideways like, who are these guys?
17:10What's that bulge on that guy's waist?
17:12That kind of thing.
17:13And they're all just kind of standing around staring at each other.
17:16So he calls me, the double.
17:19And I said, come up to room whatever it is, 615.
17:22He comes to room 615.
17:24I've propped the door open.
17:25He comes in.
17:27I tackle him.
17:29He's trying to get the gun out of his waistband.
17:32I have his arm, his hand.
17:34My colleagues burst in from the side.
17:36And I'm just sitting on him.
17:37I have him pinned down on the floor.
17:39And I'm sitting on his chest.
17:41In the meantime, he's just like, Allahu Akbar.
17:43Allahu Akbar.
17:45And so my liaison partners gave him a shot of Demerol and knocked him out.
17:54We put him on a gurney and covered him up like he was dead.
17:57And we put him in the service elevator, took him down, put him in an ambulance, and we took
18:02him to intelligence service headquarters.
18:05He woke up two hours later, tied to a chair.
18:08I said, we can do it the easy way.
18:11We can do it the hard way.
18:12It's totally up to you.
18:14We know who you are.
18:16He was the leader of that country's Hezbollah wing.
18:22I said, we want all the weapons, all of them.
18:26We know that you're the keeper of the weapons.
18:28He's like, f*** you.
18:30So I said to liaison, we should just break into his house.
18:35I mean, there's a good chance all these weapons are just in his house.
18:39And they said, we can't.
18:40He's got a live-in maid, and she doesn't know anything, and she never, ever leaves the
18:46house.
18:47And I said, okay, well, let's just declare a gas leak in the neighborhood.
18:51And then we'll evacuate the cul-de-sac.
18:53And then we'll just go in and bring a locks and picks team in and just pick the lock.
18:57They said, no, we can't do that.
18:58We don't have gas lines in this country.
19:01We use propane.
19:03Bring a propane truck.
19:05We'll leak the propane.
19:06Then we'll just declare the emergency.
19:09The fire department comes.
19:10They evacuate all of the six houses.
19:12We break into his house, and we find a safe, like a double-sized gun safe.
19:18It was enormous, the biggest gun safe I've ever seen.
19:21The weapons have to be in there.
19:23So we bring the locks and picks team in, and they've got, you know, the stethoscope on,
19:26and they're doing the tumbler, and they crack the safe.
19:29They open it, and it's empty, except for this handwritten, like childlike handwritten map.
19:36So we get in these two Jeeps.
19:38We drive south, as the map tells us to do.
19:41We get out where it tells us to get out.
19:43And we found this bunker full to the ceiling with every weapon they had, land mines, hand
19:55grenades, rocket-propelled grenades, everything they had.
19:59We completely put Hezbollah out of business in that country.
20:03And as it turns out, he's still in prison 25 years later.
20:06An SDR is a surveillance detection route.
20:14This is something that literally every CIA officer must be trained in.
20:18This is what's going to keep you from being assassinated or arrested.
20:23And so you leave what's called your kickoff point.
20:26It could be home, the office, wherever you happen to be.
20:30You'll do one that's maybe two hours.
20:31If you're in a very hostile place, your SDR could be eight hours.
20:36You're changing into pre-positioned cars.
20:38You're taking the subway.
20:39Then you're walking.
20:41Then you get in a different car.
20:43You take an Uber for a little bit of it.
20:44An SDR comes in four different phases.
20:47The kickoff phase, you just go from your kickoff to point A.
20:51And then you do kind of a, it's called a stair step.
20:55Make a right, a left, a right, a left, a right, a left to go to your next stop, which is maybe,
21:03you know, it's a fabric store.
21:05When you're stair stepping like that, you can definitely see if you're being followed.
21:10If you're being followed, you abort the meeting and you just drive home and you do the whole
21:16thing again 24 hours later.
21:19If you are not sure you're being followed, you enter what's called the provocative phase,
21:26where you'll drive halfway up a block, then make a U-turn and drive back.
21:31Make a K-turn, drive back, pull into another driveway, make a K-turn.
21:35Stuff that doesn't make any sense at all.
21:36But that's just to make sure with 100% certainty that you're not being followed.
21:43I served overseas with a woman who is a legitimate State Department officer.
21:48She came into the office one day and she said, oh, I was under heavy surveillance last night.
21:54I took them on a ride that they'll never forget.
21:57I was going 100 miles an hour down the highway and I'm just sitting there listening.
22:03Because what happened was they determined that because she tried so hard to lose them,
22:08she must be the CIA officer.
22:11And so they never, ever surveilled me.
22:13Because I'm going to the wine store and going to the fabric store and then I'm driving home.
22:18But they were plenty interested in her.
22:20You have to be very, very careful not to establish patterns.
22:24And I almost got myself burned twice.
22:26So there was one point where I was flying to Eastern Europe once a month to handle an asset that I had recruited.
22:35He was very proud of the village that he had come from.
22:38It was high up in the mountains.
22:39And there was a hunting lodge up there.
22:42He said, let's go to this hunting lodge.
22:43I remember it so fondly from my childhood.
22:45And they serve wild boar and they serve bear stew and all kinds of crazy stuff.
22:50So I went with him.
22:52I ordered a very unusual drink, which I shouldn't have.
22:55But it was something my grandmother used to drink.
22:57And I remembered it from my childhood.
22:59And he was talking about his childhood.
23:00So I ordered the drink.
23:02And the waitress brought it to me.
23:04The next month, I flew up to see him.
23:08And he said, let's go to the hunting lodge again.
23:11They have venison this time of the year.
23:13And it's really amazing.
23:14So we drive to the hunting lodge.
23:15And I ordered the drink, the same drink.
23:20And the waitress says, I remember you.
23:23And I said, no, no, I don't think so.
23:26I've never been here before.
23:28And she said, yes, you have.
23:30You're the only person who's ever ordered that drink.
23:33And I've been here for 10 years.
23:35I said, oh, that's right.
23:36I was here once before.
23:38It's like, doggone it.
23:39She spotted me.
23:41Now, she was just a waitress.
23:43But what if she had been an intelligence officer posing
23:47as a waitress?
23:48Or what if she was a police informant who's
23:50going to now rat me out to the local cops that I'm meeting
23:53with this guy?
23:55And so afterwards, I said, I am so sorry.
23:58I blew it.
23:59We can never, ever go back there again.
24:01And we never did.
24:07In January of 2002, I was named chief of CIA counterterrorism
24:12operations in Pakistan.
24:14And there was a flood of al-Qaeda fighters across the border
24:17into Pakistan.
24:18So I went out.
24:19And I came up with this idea that instead of trying to catch
24:22them in these forbidding mountains, we'll catch 5, 10, 20
24:26at a time in the safe houses.
24:28So that's the practice that we adopted.
24:31And then after I had been in Pakistan about six weeks,
24:34we got word that Abu Zubaydah was somewhere in Pakistan.
24:38We thought at the time, wrongly, that Abu Zubaydah
24:42was the number three in al-Qaeda.
24:44If you wanted to be smuggled into Afghanistan to make jihad,
24:47he would smuggle you in.
24:49And finally, I asked headquarters to send a friend of mine out.
24:52He was a targeting analyst, somebody who pours through millions
24:56of bits of data to try to isolate the location of one person.
25:01I said, buddy, we're on the trail of Abu Zubaydah.
25:04And I said, but he's right ahead of us.
25:05We just can't catch him.
25:07Like, sometimes we'd break down a door,
25:10and there's a cigarette that's still lit.
25:12So I said, you've got to pin this down for me.
25:15We just can't find him.
25:16Finally, he came to me, and he said,
25:18I can't get it down to any fewer than 14 sites.
25:21I said, 14 sites?
25:22We've never done more than two raids in a single night before.
25:26This doesn't really help.
25:27So I cabled headquarters, and I said, we're
25:30going to need a big team.
25:33I asked for 36 people.
25:35I asked for a pallet of weapons and ammunition and cash and night vision goggles and more
25:43battering rams and you name it.
25:45And then the next day, a colleague of mine and two Pakistani officers started going from
25:53site to site to look at all 14 sites.
25:55We wanted to make sure we weren't driving into an ambush.
25:57Do they know we're coming tonight?
25:59Most of these places were little hovels, little one room shacks made of concrete block or corrugated
26:06tin.
26:07It was miserable.
26:08We come out of the back end of the University of Faisalabad, and there's this enormous yellow
26:13house, which corresponds with site 12.
26:18And my Pakistani counterpart said, I can tell you right now, something bad is happening in
26:22there.
26:23He said, it's 100 degrees right now, and all their shutters are closed.
26:27They have to be broiling in there.
26:30But they want people to think there's nobody home.
26:32We caught dozens and dozens of people crammed into that house.
26:39We're going to the last site.
26:42And the analyst calls me and he says, Abu Zubaydah just made a terrible mistake.
26:47He accessed his emails from a landline.
26:51I said, oh, my God, and the landline is associated with an address.
26:55And he says, and it's site 13.
26:58I still have chills thinking about it.
27:00And I said, we got him.
27:02So we drive to site 13, but it's an empty field.
27:06I said, how can this be?
27:08We're sure that he's here, but there's no house here.
27:11It's just an empty field.
27:13And the Pakistani major laughs and he says, now, this happens all the time.
27:18He calls a young technical officer, climbs the pole, goes through this head of wires,
27:24finds the wire, follows it down the pole, down the alley.
27:28And he says, it's that house right there.
27:31We all gathered.
27:33It was like 60, 70 of us, Pakistanis, FBI, CIA.
27:38We all gathered at the safe house.
27:40I stood on the coffee table and I said, OK, so rule number one, we have to take him alive.
27:48And exactly as the clock strikes two, break down the door, separate the women and children
27:54from the men and take all the men to the Faisalabad jail.
27:58And so at 2 a.m., I was on the roof of the safe house with my buddy and I looked at my watch
28:04and I said, oh, 200, here we go.
28:08And then we hear gunshots.
28:10And I said, that's not good.
28:12We jump into our car.
28:13We speed over to Site 13 and there are three people laying in the street.
28:20One is obviously dead.
28:23One looks like he's dead or he's going to be dead pretty soon.
28:27And the other one is screaming bloody murder.
28:30So I said, what happened?
28:33And this Pakistani policeman says, we got him.
28:36We got your man.
28:37And he points at the guy who's like almost dead.
28:42I didn't have time to scream at this guy that the order was to take him alive.
28:46What happened was Abu Zubaydah, a Syrian bomber and Abu Zubaydah's bodyguard climbed
28:51to the roof of the safe house and were jumping to the roof of the neighboring house to try
28:54to escape.
28:55And this Pakistani policeman was just picking them off as they were jumping and he shot
28:59up his beta three times in the thigh, the groin and the stomach.
29:04So I said, this doesn't look anything like our target.
29:08We had a six year old passport photo.
29:10So I called the analyst.
29:11I said, listen, I don't know if it's him.
29:13He said, give me a shot of his eye.
29:14I'll run a retinal scan.
29:16So I lifted up his eye and it was rolled back in his head.
29:19All you could see was white.
29:20He's bleeding to death.
29:22All I get are the whites of his eyes.
29:24He said, get me his ear, take a picture of his ear.
29:26I didn't know that no two people on earth have the same ears until that night.
29:31They're like fingerprints.
29:32So I take a picture of the ear.
29:34Headquarters says, it's him.
29:36So we pick him up, throw him in the back of this pickup truck, speed to Faisalabad Hospital.
29:42So they rush him into surgery.
29:45But word got around the Al Qaeda community that we had gotten him.
29:48And so they started driving by the hospital and just opening fire on the hospital.
29:52We kept diving down.
29:54I said to the Pakistani major that I was with, if they realize how lightly armed we are,
29:59we're dead.
30:00I said, can you get a helicopter in here?
30:0320 minutes later, a helicopter lands in the parking lot.
30:06I walk into the operating room like this with my shirt up over my nose.
30:12I said, doc, wrap it up.
30:13We have to go.
30:15We put him on the helicopter.
30:16Like four of us got onto the helicopter.
30:18And we flew to a Pakistani military base about 50 miles away.
30:23And the doctor there said he had never seen a patient with wounds so severe who lived.
30:29But he lived.
30:31And sure enough, it took a little while.
30:33But Abu Zubaydah started to open up.
30:35The information that he gave was actionable.
30:43The way we prepared for raids in Pakistan was actually quite simple.
30:48I went online with my CIA credit card, and I bought everything I needed.
30:53I bought battering rams and bulletproof vests, weapons and ammunition, and walkie-talkies.
30:59You name it.
31:00I didn't have gear that I think most people would consider to be sophisticated.
31:05We all had nine millimeters, just nine millimeters, because they're so reliable.
31:11We all had bulletproof vests.
31:12A couple of the guys had helmets, not many, lots and lots and lots of ammunition.
31:21And that was pretty much it.
31:22We got a tip with an address.
31:25We had two CIA officers, two FBI agents, and two Pakistani officials.
31:29And we went at two o'clock in the morning, counted one, two, three, boom with the battering
31:35ram, bust the door down, throw in a flashbang grenade, just to scare everybody and make them
31:41disoriented.
31:42And we grabbed these two kids, they're 18, 19 years old.
31:46They both burst into tears.
31:48And so we got a tip later in the week from a friendly Arab intelligence officer.
31:55So we did it again.
31:57And we caught some serious people the second time, a relatively senior member of Egyptian
32:02Islamic Jihad and some Al-Qaeda, mid-level Al-Qaeda fighters.
32:07We did it at 2 a.m. because like literally everybody in Pakistan sound asleep at 2 a.m.
32:13It's like they just closed the country.
32:15There's no traffic.
32:16There's nobody out there.
32:17Everybody's asleep.
32:19And so we figured that was our best chance of not getting caught.
32:28I did dozens of interrogations when I was in Pakistan.
32:32And I was always the good cop.
32:34It was always easier for me, more natural.
32:37And the Pakistanis, because it was their country and their rules are different than ours, they
32:41could be the bad cop.
32:42So the very first interrogation I did was of a Jordanian prisoner.
32:46They brought him in, and we chained him to an eye bolt in the table.
32:51And I said, I'm from the American government, and I want to ask you some questions.
32:57And he says, very well.
32:59Then I laid out a map of the Afghan-Pakistan border, and I told him with his finger to show
33:04me exactly how he crossed the border.
33:07We knew how they were crossing the border.
33:08We called them rat lines.
33:09We knew where the rat lines were, but he told me the truth.
33:13And I thought, you know what, this actually works.
33:16And so I brought in the next prisoner.
33:20Now there were some that had read the Al-Qaeda training manual, not knowing that I had also
33:27read it.
33:28And so they pretend to pass out, and they just fall off the chair.
33:32And you're just sitting there, and then they're laying on the ground, and they open one eye,
33:35and you're like, get back on the chair, what's the matter with you?
33:39And then they get up back and sit on the chair, and then they go, oh, like this stomach pain,
33:45and you're like, buddy, I read the Al-Qaeda training manual.
33:49I know all the different things you're going to try to do.
33:52And then they just won't answer any questions.
33:55So we send them back to the jail.
33:57The ones that were cooperative, for the most part, ended up being released.
34:01Some were held for a while in Pakistan.
34:03Then they were expelled, sent back to their home country.
34:06But the ones who were uncooperative, from Pakistan, went to Guantanamo.
34:16My conversations with Abu Zubaydah were generally not substantive.
34:20After 56 hours, the CIA sent in a private jet with a trauma surgeon from Johns Hopkins University
34:26Medical Center.
34:28He flew out to the base.
34:30They picked up Abu Zubaydah, and they took him to the first of about a half a dozen secret
34:35sites.
34:36They took him all over the world just to make sure that the flight couldn't be traced.
34:40So he arrived at the secret site and was given six weeks to recover from his gunshot wounds.
34:46And so after six weeks, he was well enough to be interrogated.
34:52So an FBI agent by the name of Ali Soufan began interrogating him in that FBI way where
34:58you treat people with respect and establish this rapport.
35:04Maybe you offer him a cigarette or an orange or a cup of tea.
35:08Or if he's really, really helpful, you let him write a letter to his parents or whatever.
35:12And sometimes that takes days, weeks, months, whatever, but they always open up.
35:19And sure enough, it took a little while, a number of weeks, but Abu Zubaydah started to
35:23open up.
35:24And everything that he gave Ali was true.
35:28And it was actionable.
35:30For example, we didn't have any idea what the Al-Qaeda wiring diagram looked like.
35:35This sounds nuts now, but in the immediate aftermath of 9-11, we didn't know what this
35:40Al-Qaeda really was.
35:42The other thing he told us was even more important.
35:45So Abu Zubaydah told us about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
35:49We had never heard the name before.
35:50And we were able to focus all of our counterterrorism assets just to find Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
35:58And we found him.
35:58It took us another year, but we found him.
36:019-11 was still an open, fresh criminal investigation.
36:06And so, you know, the FBI needed to be interrogating these prisoners.
36:11And the CIA resented that we were overseas and the FBI was in charge of the interrogation.
36:18Because the traditional relationship is that the CIA is always in charge overseas.
36:25The CIA insisted that it be them.
36:27And so the CIA was not willing to be patient.
36:38They picked up Abu Zubaydah and they took him to the first of about a half a dozen secret
36:44sites where he underwent merciless torture.
36:48We have nothing to show for it.
36:50Torture is the worst possible interrogation technique.
36:53It does not work.
36:55Yes, eventually the prisoner is going to tell you what you want to know or what he thinks
37:01you want to hear.
37:02But there's so much garbage that's thrown in with that.
37:05It's going to take your analysts months to pour through the information to see what's
37:10real, what's not real.
37:12And by then, you know, the bomb has already gone off or the operation has already taken
37:16place.
37:17You know, you've just cost more American lives.
37:21Torture is not appropriate under any circumstances.
37:25We caught a guy in Pakistan and we sent him off to be tortured.
37:30And I start getting these hair on fire cables from the secret site saying, here's an address
37:36in Quetta.
37:37It's the big Al Qaeda safe house.
37:39You have to go raid it.
37:40And we bust down the door in the middle of the night and it's just some old lady living
37:44in her house.
37:47Then we get another hair on fire cable saying, there's a weapons cache and it's buried next
37:52to this building in Peshawar and here's the address.
37:56And we go and it's a shish kebab restaurant.
37:59And we've got, you know, metal detectors and ground penetrating radar and there's nothing
38:03buried there at all.
38:05The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence majority staff decided to do a complete and
38:12comprehensive study on the CIA's torture program, which of course the CIA called Enhanced Interrogation
38:19Techniques.
38:21They ended up writing a 5,000 page report that is so damning and so highly classified that
38:32all that was released was a very heavily redacted copy of the 500 page executive summary of
38:40the report.
38:41And so the CIA essentially admits that it came up with the torture program.
38:46It paid handsomely for the torture program.
38:49It implemented the torture program.
38:51When I returned from Pakistan, I was asked by a CTC colleague if I wanted to be, his words,
38:57certified in the use of enhanced interrogation techniques.
39:01I had never heard that term before.
39:03So I said, that sounds like a torture program.
39:06He said, it's not a torture program.
39:07DOJ approved it and the president signed it.
39:10I said, this is a torture program and I don't want anything to do with it.
39:13I was the only one who said no.
39:15That conversation about torture bothered me very deeply.
39:19And then I got passed over for promotion.
39:22I just captured Abu Zubaydah with these two hands.
39:26And we still thought at the time he was the number three.
39:28And I got passed over for promotion.
39:29I went into my boss's office.
39:31I was screaming.
39:32And he said, in your promotion panel, the director said that you displayed a shocking
39:39lack of commitment to counterterrorism.
39:41I said, because I won't torture people.
39:43Well, I was also friendly with the deputy director of the CIA.
39:49And he came up to me.
39:51He came up to me one day and he said, he goes like this, your name wasn't on the list.
39:55I said, do you believe it?
39:57And he promoted me with a stroke of a pen, which was incredibly generous.
40:03And then I went on to my next assignment after that.
40:06I resigned from the CIA a year later, went into the private sector.
40:13And I just, I thought, you know, this torture program is so wrong and so illegal, somebody's
40:18going to say something to the media.
40:21And nobody did.
40:24And then in December of 2007, ABC News called me.
40:29I had never spoken to a journalist before.
40:31He had a source who said that I had tortured Abu Zubaydah.
40:34I said, absolutely untrue.
40:36I was the only person who was kind to Abu Zubaydah.
40:39I'll give you your interview.
40:41And so we met up at ABC News studios in Washington.
40:46I said that the CIA was torturing its prisoners.
40:50I said that torture was the official policy of the US government.
40:54It was not the result of a rogue.
40:56And I said that the policy had been personally approved by the president.
41:00I am very sorry to tell you that Abu Zubaydah is still in Guantanamo today.
41:04This is a man who has been in American custody now for almost 24 years.
41:10He's never been accused of a crime, let alone convicted of one.
41:16And according to the Senate torture report, quoting the CIA, he will never be freed.
41:23And when he dies, he'll be cremated and his ashes thrown into the Caribbean.
41:28It's un-American.
41:30I've been in touch with his attorneys and they continue to be slightly hopeful that the political
41:40tide will eventually change and somebody in the White House is going to do the right thing.
41:46I hope that's the case.
41:48I think he should have been released many years ago when we first realized that this was not
41:54the number three in Al-Qaeda, that he had never committed a crime against Americans.
41:59He had never joined Al-Qaeda.
42:01And even if he had founded the House of Martyrs safe house and the Kandahar and Helmand training
42:08camps, he's paid for those crimes many times over, he should be released.
42:18The CIA reported me to the FBI for revealing classified information.
42:22They investigated me for three more years.
42:24I had no idea my emails were being intercepted.
42:28Terms of FBI agents were conducting surveillance on me.
42:32And then I was arrested in January of 2012 and charged with five felonies, including three
42:40counts of espionage.
42:41So I was facing 45 years in prison.
42:45The government offered me 30 months, of which I would do 23, and then the whole thing would
42:51go away.
42:52My lawyers told me that this could be a blip in my life or it could be the defining event
42:59in my life.
43:01Make it the blip.
43:02My wife and I stayed up all night long and I said, by God, I haven't done anything wrong.
43:07I'm not going to take it.
43:08The lawyers were so mad they came to my house seven o'clock in the morning and he said, you
43:13know what your problem is?
43:14Your problem is you think this is about justice and it's not about justice.
43:18It's about mitigating damage.
43:20Take the deal.
43:21And I said, if I don't take the deal and I'm convicted, what am I realistically looking
43:27at?
43:28And he said, 12 to 18 years, take the deal.
43:32And so I took the deal.
43:34The sad irony, I would even call it the sick irony of this whole story, is that I'm the
43:40only person who had any connection whatsoever with the CIA's torture program who went to
43:46prison.
43:47Not because I tortured anybody, but because I blew the whistle on it.
43:51The people who came up with the torture are free and rich, I might add.
43:56The people who approved the torture are free and rich.
43:59The people who carried out the torture are free.
44:02The people who covered up the torture are free.
44:05I was the only one who went to prison.
44:07And honestly, I wouldn't change anything.
44:10I'm on the right side of history.
44:12And they are not.
44:13I started working for the CIA on January the 7th, 1990.
44:23And my first job there was in an office.
44:27It was to be an analyst.
44:28I got bored with analysis in 1997.
44:31And so I decided to make a very unusual switch to counterterrorism operations.
44:37A counterterrorism ops position opened where they were looking for an officer who spoke either
44:43Greek or Arabic.
44:44It turned out that I was the only person in the entire CIA who spoke both Greek and Arabic.
44:50They decided that it was a lot cheaper and a lot easier to take a linguist and teach him
44:55operations.
44:56So I got the job.
44:58Then you start the basic training on how to recruit spies to steal secrets.
45:04And you go to training at what's called The Farm, which is the CIA's famed training center.
45:09The first thing I did was a class that we called Crash and Bang.
45:13It was literally crashing cars through road blocks or having your instructors shooting
45:21at your car with, you know, paint pellets and you rolling out of the passenger door and
45:26opening fire on a robot that's firing at you from a van.
45:30The bang part was learning how to use weapons.
45:34The Glock 9mm semi-automatic handgun, the Smith & Wesson .38 revolver, the Remington pump
45:41action 12 gauge.
45:43We fired tens of thousands of rounds and really became experts in these things.
45:49It was a lot of fun.
45:50And then you go into these other courses, things like defensive driving, counterterrorist
45:55driving, surveillance and surveillance detection.
45:59And then I went on to my assignment in Greece.
46:02I was halfway into my tour in Athens when I received a cable inviting me to apply for
46:09acceptance to a new training course called Advanced Counterterrorism Operations and I jumped
46:16at it.
46:17So I flew back to the States, took six weeks and it was like in depth, high threat, high
46:25danger counterterrorism operations.
46:29Then we started doing things like beacons, for example, or listening devices or covert
46:35video or, you know, we were just starting with this notion of drones.
46:41It was all brand new.
46:44The driving portion was more about crashing through roadblocks, crashing through cars.
46:52I got injured in that training.
46:54I mean, this is serious.
46:56If you're in some island in the southern Philippines and the Al Qaeda people down there are trying
47:02to stop you and they've got two cars blocking the road and you've got to crash through,
47:07you have to know which part of the car to crash through.
47:09For example, if they're just like this, right?
47:12The engine's too heavy.
47:13You're going to kill yourself if you crash into the engine.
47:15So you crash through the trunk, it pushes the car out of the way and you are able to drive
47:19off.
47:20You learn little things like the very first thing I do when I get in my car and I still
47:24do it to this day is I lock the doors.
47:27Before I even put the key in the ignition, I lock the doors.
47:29Because in training, they have you blindfolded and then they lift the blindfold off and you
47:34have three seconds to respond to whatever it is you see in front of you.
47:38It might be a roadblock.
47:40It might be a guy standing with an AK-47 in front of you or it might be a guy opening your
47:45door very quietly to put a nine millimeter at your head and say, bang, you're dead.
47:51You fail.
47:52And then you have to do the whole thing over again.
47:54So you learn all these different techniques.
47:56They sent us out to Utah and then Nevada and we just drove through the desert over sand
48:02dunes and how not to get stuck.
48:05Then we were on a track 60 miles an hour backwards and spinning around.
48:10We learned how to do pit maneuvers.
48:12But it's a lot of hands-on stuff.
48:15You're pretty banged up.
48:17Everybody had whiplash when we finished.
48:19And I had to have my right knee replaced, what we do for our country.
48:23So they prepared me for everything.
48:26In retrospect, nothing could possibly have better prepared me for 9-11 in Pakistan.
48:34I had been in Greece for a couple of months and I had bought a 50 inch TV.
48:40So I had the TV on the back seat of my BMW 540, my armored BMW.
48:47I noticed that there was a motorcyclist to my right and he was trying very hard to stay
48:54in my blind spot.
48:55When I slow down, he slows down.
48:57When I speed up, he speeds up.
48:59I'm a little nervous.
49:00So I unzipped my fanny pack so that my gun was easier to get.
49:07And I slowed down.
49:08He slowed down.
49:09I decided to slam on the brakes and try to hit the guy.
49:13But he was good.
49:14So I hit the brakes.
49:16I swerve to the right.
49:17He swerves to the right.
49:18I miss him.
49:19I speed up.
49:20He speeds up.
49:21I swerve to hit him a couple of times again and I couldn't hit him.
49:25But then it's Athens, which is famous for its traffic.
49:30So we come to this intersection.
49:33It's like a major intersection.
49:35It's 12 lanes, if you can imagine.
49:38And it's just jammed full of traffic.
49:40So I'm stuck.
49:42I pull out my gun.
49:44I'm starting to kind of panic inside myself.
49:48Not thinking, I'm in an armored car.
49:50Just crash the cars out of the way.
49:52That's what you're trained to do.
49:54But I'm prepared to get out and shoot the guy.
49:58He gets off the motorcycle.
50:00He reaches into his waistband and he pulls out what looked to me like a 38.
50:04It was a smallish gun.
50:05It may have been a 22, but it looked like a 38.
50:07I saw a path to escape.
50:10And so I gunned it.
50:12I crashed the motorcycle.
50:14The motorcycle just goes flying.
50:16And I take off up Givy CS.
50:19So I got to the cops and they found the motorcycle.
50:23It turned out the license plate had been stolen.
50:26Then the question is, was this an attempted terrorist attack?
50:29We went out to literally every single one of our counterterrorism sources.
50:34None of them knew anything.
50:36And in the end, and it was a weeks long investigation.
50:38They determined that it was an attempted carjacking.
50:42It was a thief who saw this, at the time, state of the art gigantic TV on the back of a BMW.
50:54And he thought, I'm going to carjack this guy and take his car and his TV.
51:01But it also put me in a frame of mind to be more wary.
51:06And so when I got to Pakistan, I was much quicker to act.
51:16I really believe that the future of counterterrorism is a combination of human intelligence and drones.
51:23To infiltrate terrorist groups, though, the drone's not going to collect the information.
51:29You know, these bad guys, they exercise electronic discipline.
51:33They're not going to say, the plans for the next terrorist attack are going to be this,
51:38you know, on the phone.
51:39You need human beings inside these groups to figure out what exactly they're planning
51:44to do.
51:45But then when it comes time to confront them, I think we're very quickly getting to a point
51:51where you're not going to see CIA officers on the ground with M4s and bulletproof vests
51:57and helmets parachuting out of planes.
52:00It's going to be drones with Hellfire missiles attached to their undersides.
52:05I'm worried about AI vis-a-vis counterterrorism.
52:11First of all, it's tough enough as it is to cross borders with six different identities.
52:17How in the world are CIA officers going to cross borders or get through airports with facial
52:23recognition scans and AI following their every movement around the world?
52:30At the same time, AI makes the bad guys smarter.
52:34So CIA's got the money and they have access to the right people and the right companies
52:40and the right experts to stay up on this.
52:42But this is going to be an uphill struggle.
52:45The international terrorism landscape changes constantly.
52:48There are some constants in that landscape like ISIS or any of its variations.
52:55And then there are both Al Qaeda and ISIS groups that have popped up individually in northern
53:03Pakistan, in India, in the Philippines, all over the place.
53:09It's like playing whack-a-mole where just as you destroy one, another one pops up that you
53:14have to bash in the head too.
53:16I think we should be choosing our battles carefully.
53:18We shouldn't be casting such a wide net.
53:20There's something recent that bothers me greatly.
53:24And that is the government's decision to expand the definition of a terrorist group, right?
53:32There's a pretty easy definition of terrorism.
53:34It is using violence to put forward a political goal.
53:38They're adding groups to the terrorism watch list that have never been on the terrorism
53:44watch list before.
53:47Groups that are loosely associated with what is called Antifa being added to the list is
53:52just silly to me.
53:54First of all, Antifa is not a group.
53:56It's an idea.
53:57It doesn't have a headquarters.
53:58They don't issue membership cards.
54:01They're just loosely affiliated people who are anti-fascist.
54:05I would posit that every soldier and settler who participated in D-Day was anti-fascist.
54:12They would be Antifa.
54:14So that's just silly to me.
54:16To me, that's a mistake because it diverts attention and it diverts finances.
54:24We should be focused on the groups that mean us harm, real harm.
54:28We should be out there trying to hunt down the people who have taken an oath to kill Americans.
54:35So I'm worried that it's too easy now to describe people as terrorists.
54:40I disagree with President Trump's decision to declare the narco groups in Mexico and elsewhere
54:47in Latin America as terrorist groups.
54:50At first I thought that he did that solely for legalistic reasons because it would serve
54:56to free up budgets.
54:58And it would also authorize NSA to begin wiretaps or interceptions of the cartel's communications,
55:07which is awesome, great.
55:09But declaring them terrorist groups, other than allowing the Pentagon to drone their boats,
55:15which may or may not be their boats, I think it's misguided.
55:22I'm more of a civil libertarian in this respect in that if these people are so dangerous and
55:29have committed such terrible crimes against the United States, charge them with a crime.
55:35You can't just not like somebody's face so you fly around the world to kill them.
55:39We're a nation of laws and we should abide by those laws.
55:44So Anwar al-Awlaki, for example, the spokesman for Al Qaeda, guy's an American citizen, born
55:49and raised in New Mexico, self-radicalizes, joins Al Qaeda as their spokesman.
55:55We blew him up with a drone.
55:56He had never been charged with any crime.
55:58If he was as bad as you say he was, you at the CIA, then have the Justice Department file
56:06a charge against him.
56:07But you can't just go around the world murdering people whose politics you don't like and still
56:12profess to be this beacon of respect for human rights.
56:15I like to consider myself a realist.
56:19If I had my way about it, I would tear the CIA down to the bare studs and maybe rebuild
56:25it, but as a shell of what it is today.
56:28But I know that's not going to happen.
56:30And so it's up to the rest of us through our elected officials to make sure that the
56:35CIA remain law abiding or become law abiding.
56:40Besides that, I often encourage young people to apply to the CIA.
56:45You can actually affect change from the inside.
56:47And I know that's how, if there's going to be change, that's how it's going to be.
56:51It's going to come from the inside.
56:53If people want to find more of your work, where can they find you?
56:57My first seven books were about the CIA.
56:58I have several podcasts.
57:00I have one called John Kiriakou's Dead Drop.
57:04I have one called Deep Focus with John Kiriakou that's on YouTube.
57:08And then I'm starting a nationwide speaking tour.
57:11I had a successful speaking tour around England, Scotland, Wales.
57:15So we're going to do it here in the States.
57:28You know what you'd like us to cover in this series.
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